Lately I've begun making little sketches and notes about landscape paintings and painters I like. My favorite of today was "Ski Tracks" by Edwin H. Holgate, a Canadian painter. Of course my sketch does not do it justice but it is a really beautiful paining. The shapes are so simple but compelling, there is no dead space in this painting. I would imagine that's quite a feat considering that most of the piece is white, and how did he make ski tracks look interesting? I think the shadows are what make the painting and the composition of the fence and tree with the top of the hill.
Later in the day while I was on my way to Algebra, thinking that I would get there early and catch up on logarithms, I stopped to sit on a stone bench out behind the cafeteria. There were such beautiful trees I had to get out my sketch book. What I loved most was the brilliant yellow of back-lit leaves glowing between evergreen trunks in the distance. I tried to be loose and found that, as I suspected, drawing is way more fulfilling when the drawer is relaxed. It was tempting to skip math but I left for class anyways and found that everywhere I looked there was a beautiful composition waiting to be painted! It's almost overwhelming. I felt very quiet and tree-like in the midst of all that beauty and remembered why I love trees so much. They are so strong and so yielding. They do not try to make their branches grow in any particular way, they do not spend thirty years deciding what kind of tree they want to be only to have a mid-life crisis ten years later when they realize, "I was just never meant to be a birch, I 'm an oak after all!"
Lately I've begun making little sketches and notes about landscape paintings and painters I like. My favorite of today was "Ski Tracks" by Edwin H. Holgate, a Canadian painter. Of course my sketch does not do it justice but it is a really beautiful paining. The shapes are so simple but compelling, there is no dead space in this painting. I would imagine that's quite a feat considering that most of the piece is white, and how did he make ski tracks look interesting? I think the shadows are what make the painting and the composition of the fence and tree with the top of the hill.
Later in the day while I was on my way to Algebra, thinking that I would get there early and catch up on logarithms, I stopped to sit on a stone bench out behind the cafeteria. There were such beautiful trees I had to get out my sketch book. What I loved most was the brilliant yellow of back-lit leaves glowing between evergreen trunks in the distance. I tried to be loose and found that, as I suspected, drawing is way more fulfilling when the drawer is relaxed. It was tempting to skip math but I left for class anyways and found that everywhere I looked there was a beautiful composition waiting to be painted! It's almost overwhelming. I felt very quiet and tree-like in the midst of all that beauty and remembered why I love trees so much. They are so strong and so yielding. They do not try to make their branches grow in any particular way, they do not spend thirty years deciding what kind of tree they want to be only to have a mid-life crisis ten years later when they realize, "I was just never meant to be a birch, I 'm an oak after all!"
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